I was at the hospital visiting my roommate, who got a stroke during an MRI.
Yes, this isn’t “Part 2” of my previous post at the emergency ward. By the time I got around to writing about it, my roommate had a stroke and ended up in the ICU.
She was admitted to the NICU (neuro ICU) and looked really tired, almost delirious, and her hand appeared bruised from the hundreds of needle stabs to gather blood every six hours.
Her daughter and grandson came to visit her as well. It was nice having them over to take care of the old lady.
Old lady. She looks pretty fit, even for a fiddle a quarter her age.
It bothers me when I describe her as an aged grandma. She showed me photos of her youth, gorgeous enough for Samuel L. Jackson to exclaim, “Hot damn!”
But, somewhere between the ages of 65-76, she grew old-er.
When I think of her, I imagine that about a decade from now, my stats at the treads will begin to become history. One day, I won’t be able to reverse the wrinkling of my skin or the failing of my muscles. And that’s when I’d become “old” myself.
Anyway, I was chatting with her daughter, who said she was as crazy as her mother. Funny enough, but she also mentioned that their enviously large family was predominantly composed of women and, more importantly, alpha women.
Gender stereotypes typically run deep even within Millenials, so it wasn’t surprising to find it embedded within a matriarchal family of black women who grew up in the mid-1900s in a British colony, “Rhodesia” (now Zimbabwe.)
Her daughter pointed out that in my rental home shared by five men and my roommate, the “testosterone levels” were concerning.
“Well,” I responded, “for what it’s worth, all of us are wimps. If there’s an armed burglary, we rely on your mother to save us.”
The chuckle was my extended hand of appeasement because the claim that “men are raging meatheads” sounded like a cognitive bias. Especially, since we aren’t living in 1942 anymore.
On the other hand, it is not a complete conspiracy theory either. Biologically, men have more testosterone than women and are statistically more aggressive.
But that covers only about half the truth. Men are predisposed to aggression due to genetics and societal influences, but testosterone worsens this predisposition.
Testosterone is about “winning.” If you “win” by being more charitable, then the hormone would make you behave like Jimmy Carter incarnate.
But does it make sense to have “alphas” among women?
While testosterone makes our unfriendly male gorillas vie for superior status, the love-hate hormone, oxytocin, manipulates mama bears to go all out in defending their family.
Note that oxytocin is responsible for both cuddly love and curdling hate. This means that if you found your male roommate troubling your daughter, you’d try to eviscerate the perp, even if it could cost your life. No wonder most predators find slinking back into the hole they came from as the “winnable” path.
That’s an overly complicated way of saying that you become more racist. Oxytocin in situations involving complete strangers ranges from total avoidance to outright bullying for perceived threat mitigation.
Which made me wonder — Is being alpha for either a man or a woman advantageous for social well-being?
During my master’s, I took a course called “Management of Engineering Teams.” One of the distinguishing traits of a Level-5 leader during a crisis is “to look in the mirror before looking outside the window.” The converse applies during times of glory.
But doesn’t it seem as though an alpha’s mind is driven by emotions instead of logic? No kidding! What else did you think hormones were for?
If I were the ruling party’s leader, would I ever achieve societal progress by either promoting myself (self-serving testosterone) or becoming nepotistic (in-group-serving oxytocin)? Doesn’t it appear to have an underlying theme of screwing others over for personal or tribal gain?
Our digital age marks an unprecedented evolution of our tribe of homo sapiens compared to the trivially simple primal lives of our nearest ancestors. This calls for becoming more “Beta” and taking into compassionate consideration of humanity as a whole.
As a proletarian who has the power to influence those several oceans removed from me, I want everyone to be harmless and happy. On the off-chance that I am elected a nation’s ruler, I would not desire to make decisions influenced by hormonal ecstasies that could fundamentally ruin the lives of my citizens.
If history has taught me anything, autocratic or aristocratic forms of ruling would inevitably lead to a coup that would have my detached head uneasily forced into a crown of bird droppings.
In a lesser role of my daily life as a commoner, I could easily find ten trifles at the grocery store where I could have gone berserk like an egomaniacal Ken who felt indignation.
Also, as an engineer, I always prefer beta over alpha. It is more stable, less prone to crashes, has better features, and is tested by a more mature user base for real-world problems.
We must stop being insatiably horny for the next sexy or yearning to exchange deadly blows to become the next champion.
Let virtue signaling be reserved for chest-thumping gorillas (and petulant teenagers). It’s high time we all grew up beyond our mammalian instincts.